Thursday, October 30, 2008

Today, Hannah's class and the 2nd grade class went to an assisted living facility and did a show for them. They did a great job. They have been praciticing every day for several weeks. Everyone was to dress cowboyish. So last night we were at Walmart buying a cowboy hat! We borrowed some boots from a friend.

Here are some snipettes of the songs they sang.

The last song included a little partner dancing. At the end of the song, the girls sat on the boys knees and did a hat bow. Too cute!

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

We went to 2 Halloween parties last weekend. The first was a party for the college kids. We had a "spooky supper" where we were given a menu with silly names and you choose your menu. You never know what you are going to get until you get it! Halee got her spaghetti first but didn't get a fork until the 3rd course!The other was a party at church. We did trunk-or-treat. This is what our trunk looked like.Here is Hannah and her friends - Aliza, Denali and Annelise.

Halee and Mallory.

On Sunday we carved our pumpkin. Hannah really got into it. She practically did the whole thing herself. She cleaned out the inside pretty well. I helped her to do the final scraping, but she did the rest.

She and Halee picked a design and then punched it in with a corn holder. Halee did some of the punching too, but she lost interest quickly.

Then she did the carving. I helped her with the final touches, but mostly she did it herself.

And the final project!

For Halee's birthday, she got a butterfly garden. Probably about 6 weeks ago we received the caterpillars. We have watched them grow into butterflies. They have been butterflies for close to 4 weeks now. The weather hasn't been cooperative to release them yet. Well, today I noticed it was 60 degrees. So, we let them go.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Last Thursday, the kids and I went on little trip to Utah. We went to visit some friends in Logan. What is nice about this trip is that 3 families of friends live in the same town! So, we got to spend time with all of them.

Before I get to the trip, here are some good pictures of the girls that were taken on the trip!

On Friday, we all met at a park. It was a nice time to chat with Carrie, whom I haven't seen in about 9 years. She and I were roommates one year in college. She is now married with 2 children and 1 more on the way. (The next two pictures Halee took for me!)

This is Sydney and Hannah.

On Saturday we all went to the Heritage Center. This is a living history farm with tons of things for the kids to do. I was able to snap this pictures of 13 of the 14 kids in 3 families! (Aubrey volunteered to mow someone's grass that day and wasn't able to come.) The oldest child is 13 and the youngest is 3.

We all got rides on a pony, threw some apples into an apple press and watch them get squished, watched a lady make an apple pie and another bake cookies (the kids all got to eat a cookie). Then we wondered over to the "town." Behind the stores they had a hay jump. All the kids had a great time, including Tanya and I.

Three of the kids are missing their front teeth - Hannah, Caleb, and Sydney.

This is Halee and Tabitha.

Lastly we wandered thru a corn maze - and that is truely what we did. After a while we wandered out! Then everyone was tired and it was time to go home. After dinner, I gave my kids a shower and were in bed, lights out at 6:50! They had played hard. That was nice though, because Tony stayed home with the kids and Tanya and I went back to the corn maze and actually found the way and came out the exit! It was fun to spend time just with her and chat as we wandered.

I asked the girls what their favorite part of the trip was. Hannah's was jumping on the trampoline. That is what she did any time she could. Caleb would get tired of it and want to come inside, but a few minutes later, she was asking to go outside again. She hasn't spent that much time outside in one day all summer!

Halee's favorite thing was playing in the basement. That is their playroom. It is unfinished and they can do whatever they want down there. Halee was always asking to go down there. She liked to play beauty shop.

Sunday after worship, we headed home. It was so nice to see and play and visit with everyone! About 80 miles from home in a small town between Twin Bridges and Whitehall, they were having a cattle drive through town (which is only a couple of blocks long!) We had to pull over and wait. The kids had never seen that, so it was exciting!

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Saturday we woke up to the first snow of winter. The girls couldn't wait to go and play in it. I put them off until about 9:00. The wind was blowing and there wasn't much snow, so they didn't stay out long!

There was a bit more snow this morning, but Hannah has been running a fever all weekend and I told her she needed to stay inside! Snow will come again. Halee is ready to go skiing!

The project of the weekend was closets, again. I decided on Friday that I was going to buy the "closet system" that we have been planning on buying. I got the money out of the bank and we went to Lowe's to make our big purchase. Low and behold, it was all 75% off! So we bought and bought and bought. Ed was just buying shelves for wherever! It was going to cost us $375 just for our closet. We payed $240 and got our closet, dressers for the girls closet, another shelf for the pantry and a shelf for the mud room. WOW! We were glad! Now I can put ALL my clothes in the closet (not just the season we are in) and we still have shelves left over!

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Monday after school I promised Hannah that we would get our nails done. (This was because Halee got to go to Gramma's and Hannah has been wanting to have this done for quite some time.) So, here she is getting a manicure.

Tuesday evening I went to Big Timber to meet Peggy and pick up Halee. It was good to have her back home! One of the things that Poppa gave her was this snake. She likes to tie it around her waist. That first night, she slept the whole night with it tied around her waist. She has played with it lots since she has been home.

Wednesday was the big day at the dentist for Hannah. Her two bottom teeth has started coming in and her baby teeth were NOT coming out. So the dentist got to take them out for her. We went to a pediatric dentist. They were SO nice. Everything they did they wanted to be positive. They talked and joked with her the whole time. She got this pink bubble gum smelling nose. They hook that to the laughing gas machine, so the whole time she was smelling bubble gum. She did have to have a shot too, but didn't feel a thing or even know it was a shot. The dentist (Dr. J) puts some jelly on her gums and he blew and they just feel out in his hand (that's how Hannah tells the story). The tooth on the left had the entire root still attached. The tooth on the right was about half way dissolved. So, now the new teeth can make their way forward. I was talking to the dentist today (he called to check on how Hannah was doing) and mentioned that there does not look to be enough space for those teeth to come forward. He said that is true, but the will move forward some and might be crooked but that will cause the jaw bones to start to spread out more. We'll see what the future holds for us in dentristry!

So, in this picture, you can see the top one that is already missing. You can see how the bottom teeth are pretty far back and there is kind of a gap in the front. The picture is a bit blurry because she was being silly and getting as close to the camera as possible!

This evening, the girls were doing their flip trick over Dad's legs. They get going pretty fast and pretty much just flop right over!

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Friday, Hannah's class had a field trip to the pumpkin patch. Here is her class with her teacher and a few siblings that went along too. I drove them on the bus!

After we arrived, the first thing we did was get on this hay ride. It takes us to the field where the pumpkins are.

Then each person gets to chose the pumpkin of their liking.

Then the tractor takes you back to this field. In the field are several hay structures to play on and this tent. This is Hannah and 2 friends from school, Kayla and Cassidy, and Halee.

Halee wondered off by herself to where the swings were. There were so many children there (another school was there too) and I was visiting with moms that I didn't even know she was gone. I was standing at a hay stack waiting for her to appear. As I'm scanning the area to see where she might be, I spot her over by the barns with a man that works at the farm! Oh, my! We had a little chat about that. Anyway, she really wanted to go and swing in this Clifford swing. So, I finally relented and took her for 5 mintues.

Friday afternoon, after school and the bus route, we jumped in the car for a 5 hours trip to Thermopolis, Wyoming. Ed volunteered to preach for the congregation there. They put us up in a hotel right in Hot Springs State Park. Saturday morning, Ed went fishing with one of the men from the church. The girls and I wandered around the park to "see the sights." This is one of the sights. I think this is teepee rock. Someone had the water piped to the top of this rock. As the water evoprates, the minerals are left on the rock.

Then we walked around some mineral water pools and made it to this swinging bridge, which crosses the river. The girls didn't like the bridge too much because it did swing as you walked on it!

There were 2 little playgounds there too. One had this statue of a buffalo. Halee is posing for me.

The girls have also learned how to do the monkeys bars recently too. Everytime we go to the park, I don't think to take the camera. So, here I had it with me and got a video of Hannah. These monkey bars were a bit to challenging for Halee.

In the afternoon, we went swimming in the hot springs pools. There were 2 slides there - one inside and one outside. This slide is a great slide for the kids to go on by themselves. The first time I went down with one of the girls, we actually stopped on the slide several times and had to work our way down. You have to lay down to make it go fast. So, the girls spent a lot of time on it by themselves. We would stand at the bottom and catch them. We did go on the one outside, but only 2 times. The wind was blowing a bit and by the time you got out of the warm water and walked up all the stairs, it was a bit cold!

This is Hannah. She could touch the bottom of the pool and got to where she didn't want us to catch her.

This is Halee.

This morning Ed did a GREAT job of preaching. There were 12 adults in attendance. His lesson was on how God had some temples built and how they were to be built, but in the end, we are the temple.

On the way home, Ed called his mom to see if she wanted to meet us in Laurel (about 10 miles from Billings) for a few minutes. Well, she had Chloe with her. The hospital that she works for is wanting to take some pictures with kids dressed up as doctors/nurses, etc to make posters with to hang up in the hospital. She had sent me an email a week or so ago asking if the girls could come. Well, the photo shoot is on Mon and Tues afternoon and I didn't think there was any way we could make it over there. The girls both have school and I work . . . I didn't put it together that it was tomorrow and we would be traveling thru to drop someone off! That is why she had Chloe. Anyway, Ed and I discussed it and decided that Halee could stay and we would meet on Tues in Big Timber to pick her up. Of course, Hannah was quite sad, but she just can't miss that much school. (She's already missed a day being sick and on Wednesday she has to have her 2 bottom teeth pulled and in Nov, she will miss 3 days for Thanksgiving. That's the way it goes when your 6!) The girls had fun playing at the park for a while. I'm sure Halee and Chloe will have fun the next 2 days too.